Why whole life carbon management is the key to net zero

Despite all the hype, our industry still struggles with whole life management of carbon in major projects. But without this panoramic view, we cannot decarbonise fast enough or thoroughly enough to meet our net zero targets.

Carbon Insights is designed to provide projects with the ongoing insights they need to identify and reduce carbon, and pave the way to a sustainable future.

After years of debate, the subject of carbon reduction is now ubiquitous. Yet the reality is much more complex. To achieve our net zero ambitions and decarbonise the economy effectively, we’re being challenged to go beyond individual interventions and instead support whole life carbon management. From pre-concept to decommissioning, cradle to grave, we need a holistic, in-depth, and dexterous grasp of carbon throughout the whole life of a project. 

Although maturity is growing, it varies considerably across different regions. This is resulting in a patchwork effect, with pockets of progress in some areas matched by sluggishness in others. Where regulation is patchy, investing in carbon reduction is often left to the discretion of individual companies. And organisations without sufficient carbon expertise are understandably reluctant to raise the subject with clients, stymying progress still further. 

This cycle is hard to break, but new approaches are now able to equip companies with the information they need to take the lead. Rather than being held back by a dearth of experience, engineering firms can rapidly assess the carbon intensity of their own projects and help their clients identify carbon management opportunities, without needing specialist domain knowledge. Moreover, these tools can connect project specificities to carbon management procedures, helping engineers and clients alike to identify the most promising areas of focus.

Patchwork guilt

Carbon management maturity varies wildly. In the UK, the decarbonisation agenda is more developed, driven by policy and regulation, and a commitment to the Paris Agreement. By comparison, while drivers to carbon reduction exist in the US at federal, state and local levels, they are less mature. Similarly, some clients are very proactive, meeting emerging regulatory requirements, but others are lagging behind, as carbon management is not their highest priority. 

Many parts of the world resemble the US’s carbon maturity more closely than the UK’s. But this can also be an advantage, as other regions can learn from the experiences of carbon reduction leaders to expedite progress of their own.

For many organisations, the greatest challenge of carbon management is knowing where to start. Without historical experience in this area, it’s hard to identify key project carbon drivers, options to reduce them, and the available methods to support the process. In markets where carbon management is more mature, such as the UK, application of carbon reduction is mandatory for most organisations. But in regions where this is absent, the lack of guiding structure means many firms are left in the dark. 

Funding is another issue. Where public-sector budgets are already overstretched, exploring low-carbon alternatives can feel like a luxury. Catering to growing demand and meeting deadlines on time is hard enough even with tried-and-tested practices. Many organisations are wary of upending business-as-usual.

Yet business-as-usual is becoming a liability. It results in projects with larger carbon footprints than necessary, impeding our ability to meet corporate and national net zero objectives. Moreover, as regulations evolve, organisations may suddenly find themselves scrambling to upskill their carbon management capabilities, or risk non-compliance. Most important of all, once a project is beyond the design phase it becomes significantly more difficult to make impactful reductions in whole life carbon. Failing to integrate good carbon management practices early in a project make it very difficult to enact meaningful mitigation.

Carbon Insights

Carbon Insights is a standardised yet flexible approach to integrating whole life carbon management into projects, through a consistent framework for carbon assessment and hotspot identification. The digital platform allows project teams to use open-source data and information from past projects to inform future carbon decisions, resulting in tailored, carbon management advice that facilitates carbon conversations with clients.

Carbon Insights allows non-carbon experts to input straightforward, project-specific information (around, say, geographic location or sector) and receive a summary of easily digestible, relevant insights and interventions suggesting how their particular project might reduce whole life carbon. Information is presented in a one-page summary, providing evidence, clarity, and materials needed to facilitate conversations, and show how carbon reduction is relevant to the project’s specific aims, while also saving them time.

As we have those conversations with our clients, sharing concise information helps kickstart important discussions about carbon hotspots and potential mitigation opportunities. In turn, this can ripple knowledge and confidence throughout the industry, gradually upskilling the sector as a whole. After all, helping clients to build a project history where carbon has been discussed, considered, and acted upon will encourage them to raise the topic on other projects. 

Outsize impact

Within most industries, organisations are reducing carbon in their own processes, such as in parts of their supply chain or within their own operations. But in our industry we have the chance to do so much more. We’re uniquely positioned to have a disproportionately large impact on the global carbon agenda, by influencing how major corporations build and manage their assets, how governments build tomorrow’s physical infrastructure, and how construction projects are conceived, judged, and executed. There’s so much more than our own operational carbon at stake.

Our potential to change the world for the better is enormous. And with the requisite knowledge, tools, and processes, our chances of actually realising it are even better.